It’s strange. I’ve tried to get into him but I just can’t. I’m too jaded lol and raised on too much “obvious” horror. Once you read Per Semetary, you can’t go back to the “the multifaceted, putrefaction oozing forth from the jagged shards of light that surrounded me defied rational understanding. I felt myself going mad.”
His writing comes off as scholarly, exceedingly formal but stylistically flat to me.
His ideas however? Ooooh man I love those! The guy helped create his own genre of horror but I enjoy seeing other authors interpret it more. The idea of monsters both old, ancient and beyond our understanding lends itself to a myriad of stories and permutations. Take the horror classic the fisherman. The author, John Langan, has mentioned before that while he read lovecraft and appreciated his work, he wasn’t a heavy influence on his writing.
He writes lovecraft by way of his acolytes: king, Campbell, barker, which just testifies to the enduring appeal of the mythos.
by nowlan101
41 Comments
Agreed entirely. I love his mythos and ideas, but his vernacular is just too (as you put it and for lack of a better term) scholarly. It makes his books very dry, imo. But cosmic horror is actually one of my favorite genres of storytelling.
I have the same issue with Arthur C. Clarke, fantastic world building but a very dry, scientific way of writing. Then you have Philip K. Dick, who has a “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” approach to writing sci-fi, drugs and hallucinations, a kind of raccoon-picking-through-the-trash method that seems more organic and lifelike.
I love the movie the Re-animator.
Funny, I’m the same way about Steven King. He has good story ideas but I don’t care for his writing so I watch/enjoy the movie adaptations.
I can’t read Lovecraft because he *does not* know how to do dialogue. Like, at all. It’s physically painful trying to read it.
But I *love* King’s “Lovecraftian” stuff, mostly.
You can find collections of short stories from contemporary writers inspired by the Lovecraft mythos. Neil Gaiman wrote one that recasts Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet but if the Old Ones had already taken over the world.
Just remember that all the books are set outside a mythical Boston.
“Jay! Jay! Holy shit! You seein’ this? It’s an abomination, Jay! It looks hurt Jay!”
I feel the same way about Borges. Cool ideas, blocky/tough prose like you’re wading through mud to read it.
I listened to a 50hr audiobook of Lovecraft’s complete works and came to the conclusion his mythos was amazing and his writing is decisively mediocre with atrocious dialogue. I read a Lovecraft inspired short story by Neil Gaiman and it was better than everything Lovecraft wrote
When I first picked up Lovecraft my dad said “If you’re going to read Lovecraft, you have to read a LOT of Lovecraft,” and he was right. The effect of reading his work builds the more you consume of it; it worms into your mind much like one of his horrors. I definitely enjoyed reading his work more the longer I spent reading it.
That being said, a lot of the stories just kind of suck, so I definitely see where you’re coming from.
The thing I like about Lovecraft with his mythos is that he kept them vague. You can’t really assign a creature to a group. Is Cthulhu an Old One, is he a high priest of the Old Ones? Are the shoggoths related to Yog-Sothoth. I like that he gives different versions in different stories, like you would have with traditions which are much older than mankind. And some of the other authors who work with his mythos try for force structured pantheons, I don’t like that. I’ve also seen some authors bring down the cosmic horrors to human level, and I also don’t like that. Besides that, yes, some writers do wonderful things with the Mythos. And some do wonderful things with very distant Lovecraft influences. I remember reading VanderMeer be very annoyed that people said his work was Lovecraftian, because he doesn’t see that way. And yet, name me a more “Lovecraftian” book or movie than Annihilation, it doesn’t use any of the specific things Lovecraft named, but come on, it’s the spirit of the incomprehensible cosmic horror, done even better. Though VanderMeer, I believe, chooses to call it Fiction About the End of the Holocene or something along those lines.
I’ve read the term “baking Lovecraft”, like when they use it in their work but without actually making direct reference.
Stross is another writer who does wonderful things with the Mythos. A Colder War us a more direct reference, while the Laundry Files as a more baked Lovecraft approach, with H.P. having existed in the setting and having known some things but also having gotten a lot wrong. And it’s also possible that using Lovecraftian terms is just an affectation of an unreliable narrator, which is part of the fun.
And yet, I do have some fondness for Lovecraft’s prose, I find it fun sometimes that he’s so damn grandiose and trying so hard to convey that he’s talking about un-conveyable things.
The adaptations of “At the Mountains of Madness” by Gou Tanabe, which is a graphic novel is excellent and worth picking up.
I feel like this is a normal reaction to pioneers in many mediums.
TSR era RPGs, while having their charms, don’t speak to modern gamers. 5E d&d, an actual modern RPG is substantially more popular than the older rules, in any form. Even when people use those older rules, they use a modern cleaned up version of or modern distillations of those rulesets.
I grew up on 60s classic rock bands. Loved me some Cream, Hendrix, etc, but I struggled to enjoy the 20s – 50s Blues and Jazz artists that inspired them. So did the majority of audiences that listen to Cream, Hendrix, etc.
Really, with almost any creative medium, you go too far back and it’s hard to appreciate anything but the raw ideas. Since subsequent generations have already iterated on, and evolved, the initial ideas that those pioneers presented.
Lovecraft was the first author that I read with a dictionary next to me just in case.
I’ve really been enjoying Matt Ruff’s riffing on the Lovecraft cantos in his novels *Lovecraft Country* and *The Destroyer of Worlds*.
I really loved reading one of Lovecraft’s favorite books, The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
I loved reading At The Mountains of Madness.
I honestly disagree, his writing takes a bit to get into (and there are the obvious flaws) but I started really enjoying a lot of the personal quirks that other writers ignore (like his obsession with evil wizard relatives)
This demonstrates the value of public domain. There simply *aren’t* any more modern authors whose mythos can be taken up broadly—after a certain point, copyright in the US (and, mostly, across the world) started getting continually extended to the point that no new work entered the public domain for *close to a century*.
I’m the opposite. I find the other work in his mythos formulaic compared to his original vision. Often the negative forces in his stories were ‘beyond good and evil’ in a way I found fascinating. What came after often seemed mundane by comparison.
I feel this way about Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein. The original texts are pretty far removed from their iconic modern representations.
“But, but…Im the paterfamilias!”
-H.P Lovecraft
“A horror out of time and space, a mind bending terror that tore my soul to its ragged core, reeling at the sight of unknown and benighted dead stars… a Welshman!”
Charles Stross has an interesting and fun take on the Lovecraftian horrors in his *Laundry Archives* series.
Lovecraft is one of my faves.
> Once you read Per Semetary, you can’t go back to the “the multifaceted, putrefaction oozing forth from the jagged shards of light that surrounded me defied rational understanding. I felt myself going mad.”
Yeah. I feel like Lovecraft was writing for an audience that (like him) was just coming to grips with the idea that Earth is not the bright center of the universe, it was not created for us, we are insignificant specks of bacteria clinging to an insignificant rock circling a star that’s no more than one grain of sand in an endless ocean. People could forget that, sitting in their comfortable homes, but Lovecraft’s stories brought that alienation home and closed it around your neck.
All of us grew up already knowing that was true, so in itself it holds less horror for us. The monsters are still hideous, but a monster from a distant star isn’t *inherently* more terrifying to us than a demon or a ghost or a troll.
One of my very favorite short stories is “a colder war” by Charles Stross. It takes place in the 1970’s and the big bad is called “K-Thulu”. I never realized that it was a Lovecraft mythos story. I highly recommend it.
Along the same lines of preferring the rewrite, I read “awake in the night land” (John C Wright). Also really good. When I went to find it again, I saw a positive review. Strangely, the review was by H.P. Lovecraft. Turns out I was reading a review of “The Nightland”, which was what the story I read was based upon. (Jerk). The newer story was great, the original was deeply flawed, but uniquely strange. Apparently doing stories based on The Nightland is a thing. And HPL was impressed!
Clark Ashton Smith is at his greatest, in my opinion, when he’s riffing on Lovecraft.
That’s all right, a lot of people feel the same way about George Lucas and the Star Wars universe.
I strongly disagree. Other writers don’t seem to get the horror aspect at a fundamental level. They explain too much about the unknowable beings that the mythos is about.
If your horror story explains its monsters too much, it’s no longer horror. It’s dark fantasy.
I was given a book containing a collection of HP Lovecraft stories from my father when I was twelve. I was hooked from the beginning. His bizzare eldritch horror was unlike anything I had ever read up to that time. I know his writing is awful, but I don’t care. His stories are a guilty pleasure of mine, and he will always be one of my favorite authors.
I really like The Shadow Out of Time and The Coulor Out of Space.
I had a similar reaction the first couple times I tried to read Lovecraft. Oddly enough, a couple years later I tried again…and suddenly it clicked. I am not sure what changed with me, but suddenly I could get enthralled. I can totally understand what you mean though.
I feel the same way when it comes to the films based on Stephen King’s stories. To me the less involvement King has with a project the more I enjoy the adaptation of it. I absolutely love his stories….but when it comes to his actual vision and putting it on screen……it can be pretty dang goofy.
I don’t think a single author mentioned in this discussion has written a short story more focused, atmospheric, or affecting than “The Outsider.”
Lovecraft tried to achieve a totality of effect. He often faltered. But aesthetically, he was playing chess in a field of checkers enthusiasts.
I would liken him to Stanley Kubrick. He had an aesthetic, he stuck to it, and he didn’t care about conventional storytelling. Lovecraft’s contemporaries included numerous bestselling authors nobody has heard of today. His work, not just his ideas, endure.
My problem with the Lovecraft mythos in other writers’ hands is that they keep dragging in supernatural and quasi-religious elements.
Cthulhu is a space traveler who is so alien and weird that the human mind cannot comprehend him, and seeks the protection of madness to cope with the gigantic strangeness. He isn’t from Hell, he has no interest in your soul.
That kind of stuff has no place in the Mythos.
idk, *At the Mountains of Madness* entranced me from the start the first time i read it
Lovecraft and King are simply not trying to convey the same feelings. Pet Semetary really isn’t one of the best book of his to begin with.
And I’ve read all King and almost all Lovecraft so I know both well.
Lovecraft has a “found footage” form of writing, where his stories are often read from documents written by crazy, lost or deceased people. If we compare to found footage in cinema, it means filmed by amateurs and getting rid of a lot of usual artistic techniques.
A lot of his characters are scientists or intellectuals too.
So obviously the style is different from Stephen King who’s literally writing more about what’s happening inside characters than then events taking place. You can’t do that when you’re writing pretend found documents.
Scholarly, formal and almost devoid of style is exactly what Lovecraft was going for.
People tend to equate different styles with one good and one bad, obviously the good one being the one they like the most.
I’ve seen some comments talking abour “poorly written”. Let me tell you they’re probably poorly read.
I like both writers and to me there’s not one better than the other. In fact I find most novels about HPL’s mythos written by others very bad.
King have his own mythos, which is inspired by Lovecraft but also by others and it’s better because it’s his own thing.
That’s a really interesting take on Lovecraft! It’s true, his prose can be a bit dense for modern readers. But dissecting why you prefer his mythos in other hands is insightful. Maybe it’s the focus on ideas over visceral horror, which Stephen King or Clive Barker might excel at.
Next time you explore Lovecraft’s influence, try short stories by his contemporaries like Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian) or Clark Ashton Smith. They might capture the cosmic dread with a bit more pulp action, which could be a fun twist!
Lovecraft is dense, even for his time period. He was obsessed with 19th c. writers like Poe and so wrote like them.
It’s not for everyone.
However, there’s a certain charm to the dry “scientific gentleman adventurer” style he harks on, and when you read more, you realize he actually has a sense of humour and that a lot of the silliness, density, arrogance, cheesyness, and outwardly bad decisions of the characters are entirely on purpose. It’s just that the humor is behind a veil of an unfamiliar speaking style.
Also, piece of shit that he may be, he’s also a fucking genius — surprisingly well versed with the burgeoning science of his day, he pieced it together with his imagination to dream of things that now may seem obvious but in 1930?
Take this passage from “The Shadow Out of Time”
>Some had come down from the stars; a few were as old as the cosmos itself; others had arisen swiftly from terrane germs as far behind the first germs of our own life cycle as those germs are behind ourselves.
This motherfucker used the theory of convergent evolution — a somewhat radical theory at a time where most people still believed the world to be 6,000 yrs old, to imagine that maybe we weren’t even the first *life cycle* on this planet, let alone the first intelligent race.
He also pioneered the “shared universe” and was almost psychopathically consistent on his world building.
And then there’s all the firsts. He wrote the first modern take on almost *everything* horror and sci/fi.
But it’s hard to get into as a 21st century reader, and having said that, many of his stories are allegorical to the dangers of race mixing and giving freedom to slaves..
Dat world building tho.
Also less sudden racist tirades
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
I strongly suggest checking out Dark Adventure Radio Theatre. Theyve done a bunch of retellings of Lovecrafts stories in the style of old school radio dramas, complete with various actors, music, and sound effects. They do such a fantastic job of making his work so much more approachable. There’s one moment in The Shadow Out of Time that sends shivers down my spine every time I get to it